AI War 2 v1.001 Released! "Official Game Launch!"

[x4000]

Release notes here.

The actually go-live time isn't until 11am EST tomorrow morning (the 22nd), but we're going ahead and pushing out this version now to make sure that everything is A-OK in advance.

We actually did a small build on Friday that introduced the hacking log, but it was a small one. Both of these add some various polish, balance, and bugfix items that are definitely cool. We'll do a more full post about the actual game launching when that happens tomorrow, but for now this is just the... basic notes. It's a very exciting and nerve-wracking milestone!

More to come soon. Enjoy!

Reminder: Launch Is Coming Up October 22nd!

We're now in the process of tidying things up for the 10-year anniversary of AI War Classic appearing on Steam for the first time. We're getting really close! I understand a lot of you are really enjoying the game now, which is super duper awesome. If that's you, and you haven't written a review yet, would you mind just dropping a couple of brief thoughts on the store page for the game?

There's a sea of other indie titles out there now, and I'm anxious about my career to put it kind of frankly. Please be honest, obviously, but if you're enjoying the game it would really be a big deal to me personally if you'd let other people know; that stuff makes a big difference in our ability to get featuring on the store, in how people choose to purchase or not, and so on.

Problem With The Latest Build?

If you right-click the game in Steam and choose properties, then go to the Betas tab of the window that pops up, you'll see a variety of options. You can always choose most_recent_stable from that build to get what is essentially one-build-back. Or two builds back if the last build had a known problem, etc. Essentially it's a way to keep yourself off the very bleeding edge of updates, if you so desire.

The Usual Reminders

Quick reminder of our new Steam Developer Page. If you follow us there, you'll be notified about any game releases we do.

Also: Would you mind leaving a Steam review for some/any of our games? It doesn't have to be much more detailed than a thumbs up, but if you like a game we made and want more people to find it, that's how you make it happen. Reviews make a material difference, and like most indies, we could really use the support.

Enjoy!

Chris

[BadgerBadger]

Woo! I'm sure I have a bottle of champagne around here someplace.

[Strategic Sage]

Congratulations!  Count me as one who was not overly impressed initially, but the more I've gotten to tinker with what AI War 2 has become, the more I've appreciated the vision and respected this excellent new offering. 

*Rushes off to mash that record button*

[Nuc_Temeron]

Mega congrats Arcen! May you have many years of expansions, patches, and new games in your future.

[AnnoyingOrange]

Yay! Let's hope the launch goes well, although given the quality of the competition this game has nothing to fear.

[madcow]

Congratulations on making it to release! I haven’t been following development lately (last I saw it was still a mobile command center). I had recently been feeling the itch to play a strategy game so I will definitely be diving into this.

[asva]

Hey. Awesome you made it to release .

I thoroughly enjoyed original Ai War and plan to get 2nd part in a way that's most profitable to the developer (steam version is 4$ in my region minus steam margin is pretty much nothing).
As far as I see https://www.humblebundle.com/widget/v2/standalone/aiwar2/2v5s8m9d4j - this one is most profitable?

Also do we have a donation button? Buying in steam and donating the rest sounds like a good option to me.
Thanks.

[Misery]

Wow.  So, it finally happened, eh?  A big congrats to everyone on the team for this one!

I admit I havent been following it much lately.  Heck, barely been here at all, for which I apologize.  But there's next to nothing I could have done to help with this one really.   I love taking part in early access, but with an RTS, I doubt "this unit moves slow, make it move faster because I'm impatient" is a particularly helpful piece of advice, yet it's likely the best I would have done.  I dont understand how you guys can balance something in this genre.  All those stats and whatnot.  Confuses me just thinking about it.

Anyway.

I'll be diving in later today.   I do intend on writing a Steam review for it ASAP, and will be telling everyone I know about it.

Also, I've been doing reviews and such for a site called SaveOrQuit, so I might.... *might*.... try and do a full review there.  But, no guarantee.  The fact that I have a connection to Arcen whatsoever... and thus potential bias... is a consideration, so they might not want me to do that (and if that's the case, I'll see about getting someone else to do it).  If it does work out though, it'll be a couple of weeks off.  Writing those is different than writing a Steam review.



Whatever the case though, it's awesome to see this now.  Been quite awhile since development started, eh?  But here it is.

Good luck, Chris, here's hoping it sells well and people actually take notice of it.


That's it for now!  Feedback and whatnot to come later.

[ptarth]

Huzzah!

[kasnavada]

So... how is it going ? I've seen twice AI War II in my "new and trending" steam feed.

That's a good sign right ?

[Lord Of Nothing]

I had a bit of time tonight to actually play, and while I only got to do the tutorials and a little bit of an actual game, I really like how much more polished and coherent everything feels now compared to when I last played, I think I'm going to get good mileage out of this.

Having said that, I have nit-picking:
The generic tooltips for XP gain based on number of fleets seem self contradictory- if, say, we have two fleets on a planet, with no mark level penalties, they say that we are gaining N XP (150% of normal), and then explain that XP gains are boosted by 150% because blah blah blah. But that's not the same thing. If the first part is right, the second part should say boosted by 50%, because that's the extra amount, and if the second part is right, it should be 250% of normal.
The heading for Hunter Fleet in the how to play shouldn't be HunDer Fleet, I assume?
In the Marauder entry, Noone is missing it's - .
I couldn't find any explanation of the XP system in the how to play section?

The Amounts of metal being stored by the macrophages seem totally out of balance with the amount being generated by the tellium? (Intensity 7) Is this simply an artefact of intensity?
In the first actual game, the following occurred that seemed a bit odd: Enemy marauders killed an AI command station, presumably themselves incuring AIP, I certainly did not. They were then driven off before claiming the planet. Friendly marauders then captured the planet and build an outpost. They did not incur AIP, despite Allied AIP being on - so I could clear an unlimited number of planets for them with no AIP gain by waiting for the hostile to all marauders to kill the command station? That seems unbalanced, if a bit clunky.


If I wanted to make the larger splash explosions a little less bright, fast and flashy, what would be the option for that? Right now I just have them disabled.

[kmunoz]

...
The generic tooltips for XP gain based on number of fleets seem self contradictory- if, say, we have two fleets on a planet, with no mark level penalties, they say that we are gaining N XP (150% of normal), and then explain that XP gains are boosted by 150% because blah blah blah.

...

In the Marauder entry, Noone is missing it's - .

In the first case, "boosted by" could just be changed to "boosted to" and then you wouldn't even have to change the percentage.

In the second case, it definitely shouldn't be "noone" but it also shouldn't be "no-one." It should be "no one."

[kasnavada]

Having said that, I have nit-picking:
The generic tooltips for XP gain based on number of fleets seem self contradictory- if, say, we have two fleets on a planet, with no mark level penalties, they say that we are gaining N XP (150% of normal), and then explain that XP gains are boosted by 150% because blah blah blah. But that's not the same thing. If the first part is right, the second part should say boosted by 50%, because that's the extra amount, and if the second part is right, it should be 250% of normal.
The heading for Hunter Fleet in the how to play shouldn't be HunDer Fleet, I assume?
In the Marauder entry, Noone is missing it's - .
I couldn't find any explanation of the XP system in the how to play section?

As far as I can tell, like kmunoz told you, it should write "XP gains are x% of normal".
It's especially strange when you have 4 fleet, because the text then tells "XP penalty: 80%" which to me means that I gain 20% of xp... but it's 80%.

[I-KP]

The game has a number of linguistic quirks. The XP texts are one such example, as noted. The unit card texts also have some very awkwardly phrased ways of saying things like, 'if target Engines are >7gX,' or 'if target has <=40mm armour'; instead you get phrases like 'if the target has not more than 40mm'.

[Draco18s]

Speaking to unit values, I'd really love some easy-to-parse adjectives like "if armor <= 40mm (light)" or "engine strength > 7gX (high)"

I know it won't be perfect, but its eaiser to remember things like "light armor, high acceleration, low mass" and look for a unit that counters one of those three things, rather than having to go "lets see, its got 50mm of armor, 1000 tons of mass, and engines of 7g. Or was that 70mm of armor and 5g?"